


And yet.

by Settiai



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, One Shot, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 07:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15529074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/pseuds/Settiai
Summary: No one knows what the future might hold.A look at one of many possibilities.





	And yet.

The closer they got to the gravesite, the quieter everyone grew. Even their newest companion picked up on it eventually, his ramblings trailing off for possibly the first time since they'd met him in that graveyard. They were entering into death's abode, and life had no place in it. Or perhaps it was the other way around and it was life's abode that death had no place in.

Either way, they could all feel the wrongness of the situation. Some of them more than others, perhaps, but it couldn't be missed.

Caleb pulled his coat up a little higher and tried his best to ignore the world around him. He focused his gaze on the dirt road they were walking along, pointedly not letting his eyes drift up ahead as they made their way closer and closer to where everything changed.

And yet he could almost see the scene even without looking.

He should have known better than to think any of this could end well. It had been nothing more than a fool's hope, and the gods knew he was a fool. This was what he deserved for thinking that maybe, just maybe, this group of misfits he'd found himself among might be something more than he'd first thought.

Less than two months together, and all it had taken for them to shatter was a single day. Oh, they'd found most of their missing pieces – and even a few extra, when it was all said and done – but there was still a large shard that was lost, and they all knew it.

If Caleb was honest with himself, he'd rather avoid the grave entirely. It was easier to forget that way, to pretend that they hadn't left a friend in a shallow hole with a note in his pocket that none of them truly believed would ever be read. But the ones who had been taken – Fjord, and Jester, and Yasha – they had not been there when Molly fell. They had not been there when Caleb used his magic to dig a hole to place a too-still body in.

They had not been there, so back they went. All of them.

The silence was almost grating. It had never been silent when Molly was around. He had seemed almost incapable of it. Hearing him be so silent had seemed almost worse than seeing him be so still, in Caleb's mind at least.

And yet it had still happened.

"What the fuck?"

Beau's voice rang out in the stillness, a mixture of pure rage and hopeful incredulity. Caleb's gaze shot up from the ground immediately, already calling flames to his fingertips before he saw what she was staring at.

The magic he'd been calling forward fizzled and died as he stared.

The others pushed past him, moving forward as anger and hope and fear and a dozen other emotions rushed across their faces. Caleb didn't move. He stayed where he was, his eyes focused on the scene in front of him. If he felt anything at all, it was numb.

He clearly remembered what Mollymauk's grave had looked like when they'd walked away from it: a dark lump of cold soil with a makeshift grave marker made of sticks beside it, a familiar multicolored coat waving in the wind as if it was telling them "goodbye."

The dirt was there, as were the sticks. But that was the only similarity to the scene in front of them.

The hole that Caleb had so carefully dug was empty, the soil that had been piled on top of it spread to the sides. It was more mud than dirt from days' worth of rain, and there was no way to tell if the grave had been disturbed from above or below. There was no coat resting on the marker made of sticks, waving at them in the wind.

Most importantly, there was no sign of any body – living or dead – as far as Caleb could see.

"I knew it!" Nott's voice seemed overly loud over the murmurs of the others. "He came back once already, remember? I knew he'd be fine this time."

Jester's laughter a moment later sounded almost like a sob, but the relief in it was impossible to miss. Caleb flinched at the sound.

He met Yasha's gaze for just a moment before looking away even as she did the same. She'd been even quieter than usual since they'd broken the news to her, and her already pale skin had gained an almost sickly hue to it. In the split second their eyes had met, he'd seen a clear reflection of all of his own doubts.

There was no way for them to know what had happened. Perhaps Mollymauk truly had somehow beaten the odds and pulled himself out of his own grave again. Odder things had been known to happen. They had left him a note. He could already be on his way back to Zadash to meet them, a smile on his face and teasing on his lips.

Or perhaps it had not been Mollymauk who had dug their way out of the cold dirt. It could have been Lucien, returned to the body that had been taken from him with no interest in the person who had been walking around in it the past two years. Or it could have been no one at all, an empty husk ready to become someone new entirely, neither Lucien nor Mollymauk but another person altogether.

Maybe he had not been the one to disturb the grave at all. The dirt was spread all around, and rain had destroyed any clues that might have once been there. The grave could have easily been disturbed from above instead of within. Caleb knew better than most that there were many things that a body could be used for by someone with the right type of magic.

There were many potential explanations, and very few were good. Caleb was not one to believe in happy endings. That was something for children, a fairytale until they were no longer innocent enough not to know how cruel the world could be.

And yet part of him wanted to believe this one time. Even knowing that fate could have a cruel sense of humor.

Only months of practice kept Caleb from startling when a small hand slipped itself into his, squeezing tightly. He glanced down at Nott and quirked an eyebrow, trying to keep his worries off his face for her sake. For now, at least.

She grinned up at him, her teeth sharp and pointy. She wasn't hiding behind a mask for once, whether it be her physical one or something more metaphorical. "Molly's going to be jealous when we tell him about all the loot we found," she said matter-of-factly. "Not to mention he's going to wish that he'd met Nila too."

Caleb took a shaky breath. Molly's face flashed in his mind, eyes wide open and his body still and lifeless as his blood poured out onto the ground beneath him. For a moment, he felt phantom lips pressing a kiss against his forehead.

The odds were that an empty grave was not a good sign. That there was something much darker at work. That it was not what any of them was hoping it was.

And yet.

"Ja," Caleb said, his gaze focusing on the sticks that he had set up as a grave marker. Where Mollymauk's coat had been hanging the last time that he'd seen it. "Ja, you are right."

Caleb knew better than to get his hopes up. He knew that the world was a cold place. He knew that it couldn't be as simple as so many of the others seemed to think that it was.

And yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me over on Tumblr. (http://settiai.tumblr.com/)


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